


bloom

by FallingStars5683



Series: moss [2]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Almost home, Another Quiet Moment, Gen, Lars is Surprisingly Profound, Sadie is Screaming, Steven is Suffering, Tears, more moss flowers, this is not lars/steven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 13:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14619165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FallingStars5683/pseuds/FallingStars5683
Summary: Steven needs to talk to someone about the whole Pink Diamond thing. So, he goes to Lars.





	bloom

**Author's Note:**

> The other half of those stories. Again, it's not very well written, but it's obviously the longer of the two. I hope you enjoy!

Steven sat on the porch, looking off into the distance. It had been a week since he had learned about the true identity of his mother, and it still boggled his mind. What was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to _think_? It was already crazy that his mother was Rose Quartz, rebellion leader and rogue gem, but now she was also a head of the Diamond Authority? How was he supposed to deal with this?

What’s worse, he hadn’t been able to talk to Connie about it, either. She was on vacation with her parents, and they hadn’t allowed her to use a phone since the vacation started. Well, none of them were using phones, but that wasn’t the point! How could he talk to his Jam Bud about this stuff if she couldn’t be reached?

He sighed, laying onto his back, and resigned himself to a lifetime of never being able to fully understand why his mother – _Pink Diamond_ – had done what she did. To quote Lars: this sucked.

Wait.

_Lars._

Steven could talk to Lars! He might not know exactly what’s going on, but Steven could catch him up! And, if nothing else, it helped get his problem out of his brain. Just talking about it would make him feel better.

Jumping up, he bolted off the porch and down the stairs, to where Lion was roosting under the shadows of the rocks. “Lion! Lion, I need to see Lars!” he yelled out, although why he still talked to the big cat, he wasn’t really sure. He had come to accept a long time ago that Lion would never really listen to him.

Lion yawned, unfazed, and rolled over.

“Thanks, Lion,” Steven said, grinning. Taking a big breath, he jumped into Lion’s mane and through, catching himself before he could take a spill on the floor of the Sun Incinerator.

“WHOA!!” Lars jumped in alarm. Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting this. Which was dumb. He should expect this all the time now. “Uh, hey, Steven. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re dropping in like this. What’s the occasion?”

“Um…” Steven glanced around. None of the other Off-Colors seemed to be around. Not even Padparadscha, which was incredible, as she had recently taken to following Lars around everywhere. “Where are the others?”

“We finally got the autopilot I built online, so they’re down taking a break.”

“Ohhh.” Steven shuffled his feet. “I wanted to talk to someone about something, and none of the Crystal Gems can really help me.”

“What about Connie?”

“On vacation.”

“Welp.” Lars rubbed the back of his neck, looking a little nonplussed. “I guess you can talk to me, but I’m not good at this stuff.”

“You’re a good listener. That’s all I need right now.”

“…Alright. What’s up?”

And so began Steven’s recounting of the whole sordid tale. Granted, it didn’t consist of much, considering there wasn’t a whole lot he really knew, plus he had a habit of cutting to the chase incredibly quickly. But there were a lot of feelings involved, and Lars got the gist. He could tell from the way Lars’s face bunched up in that way it always did when he had no idea what was happening anymore. “So—” Lars had to stop, collecting himself. “So what you’re saying is…you thought your mom was a rebel leader who saved the Earth, but then you found out she lied about a bunch of stuff, and _then,_ to cap it off, you find out that she really _wasn’t_ a Rose Quartz at all, but actually Pink Diamond, the super important fourth leader of the Homeworld Gems that everyone thought was murdered by the rogue Rose Quartz that was really your mom, but at the time was really Pearl in disguise?”

“Yeah, that’s about it.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. And now…gosh, at least before I had some idea of who she was. But now I don’t even have that! I had no idea who she was, or why she created the Crystal Gems, or why she wanted to stay on Earth so badly! Who was she?”

It was quiet for a moment, save the faint whirring of the autopilot. Lars had shifted into looking more contemplative than confused. Steven wasn’t sure what he was going to say, if anything at all, but at least venting had gotten some of the pressure off his chest.

“Well, I think, in a way, you still kinda know her.”

That was not what he was expecting to hear. He whipped around, staring Lars dead in the face. “What does that mean?”

“Well…” Lars blushed slightly. “This might sound really weird, but remember that time over a year ago, when we almost got eaten by that moss?”

That was random. “You mean the moss we had to get to the top of that hill?”

“So that it could bloom, yeah.”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, I remember, when we were first freaking out about it, that I said the whole day was ruined because of that moss that your mom grew, and you told me that she saw the beauty in everything. I think that’s still true. Why else would she plant that moss?”

Steven opened his mouth to reply, then found he had no words.

“And, yeah, it almost killed the five of us, but, when we got it to the hill and it bloomed, it was beautiful.” Lars looked out into the expansive space beyond the ship. “In my time out here with my crew, I’ve seen a lot of Gem-controlled planets. They all looked pretty much the same. The organic life was all gone, the ground had been completely paved over, and the only living beings there were Gems. Homeworld doesn’t care about any organic life. But your mom – Rose Quartz, Pink Diamond, whatever – she did. She fought so that the Gems under her jurisdiction didn’t have to follow that philosophy of razing entire worlds to the ground. She left because she didn’t agree with the other Diamonds. I don’t know if she really knew everything that would happen, but it sounds like she was trying to do the right thing, even if it ended up turning sour.” He leaned over, hugging Steven tightly. “She really did see the beauty in everything, Steven. Whether it was a group of squishy humans, or a weird patch of moss. She still cared for it. And so should you. I think you should be proud to have someone like that for a mom.”

Steven…couldn’t speak. He didn’t know if he could even breathe. He had forgotten all about that moss, that weird magical plant that slimed around in a pond by the beach until its blooming season. It seemed so unimportant in the face of everything else that happened right afterwards. It was even before he met Lapis. He shouldn’t have forgotten. He hugged Lars back as hard as he could.

They broke away after a few minutes. Lars picked up a corner of his cape and wiped the tears from Steven’s face, which shocked him. He hadn’t even realized he was crying. “That moss was just trying to bloom, and so was she,” Lars said softly, “and so are you. You shouldn’t let something like this change what you know is true. It’ll keep you from showing the world how beautiful you are.”

Steven wiped at his own face. “Yeah,” he agreed, not knowing what else to say. He wasn’t expecting Lars to be this…profound. Then he realized. “Wait, you remembered the moss all this time?”

“Uh…” Lars blushed. “Yeah. I remembered how important it was to you, and I didn’t want it to be stuck again, so this past spring, I…helped it. I promised myself I’d get it to the hill every year. Seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Oh – oh yeah!!” The memory, buried underneath all the other things that had happened right afterwards, came tumbling back. “I remember now! Connie and I were on the beach, and then the blooms came down, and we saw you at the top of the hill! I can’t believe I forgot about that!”

Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you waved at me. It was funny.”

It was quiet again. Eventually the boys got to chatting about other things, and then it was time for Steven to go home. “I’ll come by again soon,” he promised.

There was a ping from one of the control panels, and Lars’s head snapped up at the sound. He smiled real wide. “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

“What? Why?”

Instead of answering, Lars asked his own question: “Can you do me a favor?”

“Uh, yeah, of course. What is it?”

“Can you pass a message to my parents and Sadie?”

“Like I always do.”

“Cool. Tell them we’ll be landing on the beach in about a week.”

“Alright, got it – wait, _what??_ ”

“Yep.”

“A week?!?”

“Yep!”

“Holy – !! That’s incredible!! You guys are moving so fast!!”

“Yeah, we’re space pirates, what did you expect.” That signature Lars smirk. It was great. “But, yeah, just hang tight. We’ll be there soon.”

They said their goodbyes, then Steven left, popping out of Lion’s mane with so much excitement he could hardly contain it. “Oh my gosh!! Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh…” He couldn’t hold it in. It was only about six in the evening, but he knew he would be up all night. Pulling out his phone, he dialed Sadie’s number as fast as he could, almost hitting the wrong number several times.

It took a moment for Sadie to pick up, and when she did, she sounded tired. “Steven, I’m in the middle of a practice. What is going on?”

“Oh my gosh, Sadie!! You’re not gonna believe this, it’s nuts!!”

“What?”

“Sadie, Lars is almost home!!”

There was a muffled thump and an odd scuffling, making static noises for just a moment. Steven could hear Jenny cry out in alarm and Buck’s voice (“Sadie, are you alright?”) before Sadie’s voice filled the line: “ _What? Are you sure?_ Steven, you better not be messing with me!!”

“No, it’s true! I just went to see him, and he says he’ll be here in a week!”

She let out some sort of unintelligible shriek that lasted for several moments. Steven just laughed. Of course, she would be more excited about this than him. It didn’t seem like she would be calming down enough for decipherable speech any time soon, so he simply hung up and shot her a text saying that he was on his way to the Barrigas and set off. The boardwalk still had people milling around, but he didn’t pay them any mind. At one point, though, he did stop and look up at the hill. It was bare now, but he remembered the moss flowers drifting from the sky, how beautiful they were, and swore to himself that he wouldn’t forget. And then he turned and ran off. There was still so much ahead.

**Author's Note:**

>  ~~oh whoops i have a stance on the pink diamond thing maybe i shouldn't write it oH WHOOPS~~  
>  I had some feelings.  
> Really, at this point, should Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond have separate tags? What if we just called her Rose Diamond?  
> Come scream with me on my [blog!](https://fallingstars5683.tumblr.com/)


End file.
